A novel way of finding an ancestor

[David Tuson]

From “Letter of the Month” to Family Tree Magazine (Summer 2008)

The writer was “…..looking for the death certificate for Francis Denton who died in 1853 (found in the parish register), but could not find his death in the GRO indexes. Knowing it would entail a long list he entered the forename Francis for East Yorkshire hoping a close approximation of Denton would appear. In the correct quarter of 1853 he found in the forenames ‘Francis Denton’ with a surname of SENIOR. He now has the certificate which shows the correct surname (Denton)”

So, although SENIOR is a surname it may pay to use it as a Keyword in a search (in desperation of course). And how about JUNIOR, BACHELOR, SPINSTER

You'll need heaps of patience with this approach, but then we have patience in abundance, don't we????

David

[susan-y]

Something similar happened to me....

Yesterday, while searching for the birth of children of my husband's gr. uncle whose first name ( Montlow), has a different spelling and sound on every transcription entry ( Monton, Moulton, Molton, Montollow,etc!) I found that on this original page of births eveyone was listed surname first, except the mothers' so the transcriber, being in surname first mode, had the mother's christian name listed as her surname. Her maiden name was Cornelia May Purdy, ( correct on original) but she was transcribed as May Purdy Cornelia.

So, I guess christian names may also work in surname boxes..........|laugh1|

Oh, on this one, the dad is Moulto|biggrin|..last name is Potter..a little harder to screw that up:confused:

Sue